According to anarchist communists Peter Kropotkin and Murray
Bookchin, the members of such a society would spontaneously
perform all necessary labour because they would recognize the
benefits of communal enterprise and mutual aid.[5] Others,
such as Nestor
Makhno and Ricardo Flores
Magon believed that all those able to work in an anarchist
communist society should be required to do so.[6][7][8][9].

Anarchistcommunism is also known as
anarcho-communism, communist
anarchism, or sometimes, libertarian
communism. However, while all anarchist communists are libertarian communists, some libertarian
communists, such as council communists and Luxemburgists, are
not anarchists but are instead Libertarian Marxists. What
distinguishes anarchist communism from other variants of
libertarian communism is the former's opposition to all
forms of political power, hierarchy and domination. However, some
writers use libertarian communism and libertarian socialism as synonyms
for anarchist communism or even anarchism in general.[10]

Development
of ideas

Anarchist communist currents appeared during the English Civil
War and the French Revolution of the 1700s. Gerrard
Winstanley, who was part of the radical Diggers movement in England, wrote in his 1649 pamphlet, The
New Law of Righteousness, that there "shall be no buying or
selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole earth shall be a
common treasury for every man," and "there shall be none Lord over
others, but every one shall be a Lord of himself."[11]
During the French Revolution, Sylvain Maréchal, in his Manifesto
of the Equals (1796), demanded "the communal enjoyment of the
fruits of the earth" and looked forward to the disappearance of
"the revolting distinction of rich and poor, of great and small, of
masters and valets, of governors and governed."[11]

An early anarchist communist was Joseph Déjacque, the first person to
describe himself as "libertarian".[12]
Unlike Proudhon, he argued that, "it is not the
product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to
the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their
nature."[11][13]

The collectivist anarchists
advocated remuneration for labor, but held out the possibility of a
post-revolutionary transition to a communist system of distribution
according to need. As Bakunin's associate, James
Guillaume, put it in his essay, Ideas on Social
Organization (1876), "When... production comes to outstrip
consumption... [e]veryone will draw what he needs from the abundant
social reserve of commodities, without fear of depletion; and the
moral sentiment which will be more highly developed among free and
equal workers will prevent, or greatly reduce, abuse and
waste."[14]

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First
International

Anarchist communism as a coherent, modern economic-political
philosophy was first formulated in the Italian section of the First International by Carlo Cafiero,
Emilio Covelli, Errico Malatesta, Andrea Costa and
other ex-Mazzinian Republicans[15]. Out
of respect for Mikhail Bakunin, they did not make
their differences with collectivist anarchism explicit
until after Bakunin's death.[16] The
collectivist anarchists sought to collectivize ownership of the
means of production while retaining payment for labor, but the
anarcho-communists sought to extend the concept of collective
ownership to the products of labor as well. While both groups
argued against capitalism, the anarchist communists departed from
Proudhon and Bakunin, who maintained that individuals have a right
to the product of their labor and to be remunerated for their work,
by proposing that individuals should be free to access goods
according to their needs without respect to how much labor they
exert.

Cafiero explains in Anarchy and Communism (1880) that
private property in the product of labor will lead to unequal
accumulation of capital and, therefore, the reappearance of social
classes and their antagonisms, and thus the resurrection of the
state: "If we preserve the individual appropriation of the products
of labour, we would be forced to preserve money, leaving more or
less accumulation of wealth according to more or less merit rather
than need of individuals."[11]
At the Florence Conference of the Italian Federation of the
International in 1876, held in a forest outside Florence due to police activity, they declared the principles of
anarcho-communism, beginning with:

"The Italian Federation considers the collective property of the
products of labour as the necessary complement to the collectivist
programme, the aid of all for the satisfaction of the needs of each
being the only rule of production and consumption which corresponds
to the principle of solidarity. The federal congress at Florence
has eloquently demonstrated the opinion of the Italian
International on this point..."

The above report was made in an article by Malatesta and Cafiero
in the (Swiss) Jura Federation's bulletin later that
year.

Peter
Kropotkin

Peter
Kropotkin, often seen as the most important theorist of
anarchist communism, outlined his economic ideas in The
Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and
Workshops. Kropotkin felt that co-operation is more
beneficial than competition, arguing in Mutual Aid: A Factor of
Evolution that this was illustrated in nature. He advocated
the abolition of private property through the "expropriation of the
whole of social wealth" by the people themselves,[17]
and for the economy to be co-ordinated through a horizontal network
of voluntary associations[18]
where goods are distributed according to the physical needs of the
individual, rather than according to labor.[19]
He further argued that these "needs," as society progressed, would
not merely be physical needs but "[a]s soon as his material wants
are satisfied, other needs, of an artistic character, will thrust
themselves forward the more ardently. Aims of life vary with each
and every individual; and the more society is civilized, the more
will individuality be developed, and the more will desires be
varied."[20]

He maintained that, in anarcho-communism:

...houses, fields, and factories will no longer be private
property, and that they will belong to the commune or the nation
and money, wages, and trade would be abolished.

Individuals and groups would use and control whatever resources
they needed, as the aim of anarchist communism was to place "the
product reaped or manufactured at the disposal of all, leaving to
each the liberty to consume them as he pleases in his own
home."[22] He
supported the expropriation of property to ensure that everyone
would have access to what they needed without being forced to sell
their labour to get it.

We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we wish to give
to the workers all those things the lack of which makes them fall
an easy prey to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that none
shall lack aught, that not a single man shall be forced to sell the
strength of his right arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself
and his babes. This is what we mean when we talk of
Expropriation...

He said that a "peasant who is in possession of just the amount
of land he can cultivate," and "a family inhabiting a house which
affords them just enough space... considered necessary for that
number of people" and the artisan "working with their own tools or
handloom" would not be interfered with,[24]
arguing that "[t]he landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the
peasants, and the wealth of the capitalist comes from the same
source."[24]

While many anarcho-communists are opposed to trade, some post-left and post-scarcity
anarcho-communists, and ones with syndicalist sympathies, are not opposed to
trade. Some support a non-monetary form of trade in the form of
non-monetary commons. Others such as Tiziana Terranova easily see
anarcho-communism being compatible with a non-hierarchical, open
access, free association, non-monetary form of trade such as P2P.[25]

Economic
theory

Anarcho-communism stresses egalitarianism and the abolition of social hierarchy and class distinctions
that arise from unequal wealth distribution, as well as the
abolition of private property and money. Replacing these approaches would be
collective production and distribution of wealth by means of
voluntary association. In anarchist communism, the state and
private property would no longer exist. Each individual and group
would be free to contribute to production and to satisfy their
needs based on their own choice. Systems of production and
distribution would be managed by their participants.

The abolition of wage labor is central to anarchist
communism. With distribution of wealth being based on
self-determined needs, people would be free to engage in whatever
activities they found most fulfilling and would no longer have to
engage in work for which they have neither the temperament nor the
aptitude. Anarchist communists argue that there is no valid way of
measuring the value of any one person's economic contributions
because all wealth is a collective product of current and preceding
generations. For instance, one could not measure the value of a
factory worker's daily production without taking into account how
transportation, food, water, shelter, relaxation, machine
efficiency, emotional mood etc. contributed to their production. To
truly give numerical economic value to anything, an overwhelming
amount of externalities and contributing factors would need to be
taken into account – especially current or past labor
contributing to the ability to utilize future labor. As Kropotkin
put it: "No distinction can be drawn between the work of each man.
Measuring the work by its results leads us to absurdity; dividing
and measuring them by hours spent on the work also leads us to
absurdity. One thing remains: put the needs above the works, and
first of all recognize the right to live, and later on, to the
comforts of life, for all those who take their share in
production.."[26]

Anarchist communists argue that any economic system based on
wage labor and private property requires a coercive state apparatus
to enforce property rights and to maintain unequal
economic relationships that inevitably arise from differences in
wages or amount of property. They further argue that markets and systems of currency
divide labor into classes and assign arbitrary numerical values to
an individual's work and attempt to regulate production,
consumption and distribution. They argue that money restricts an
individual's ability to consume the products of their labor by
limiting their intake with prices and wages. Anarchist communists
recognize money as fundamentally quantitative in nature, rather
than qualitative. They believe production should be a qualitative
matter, and that consumption and distribution should be
self-determined by each individual without arbitrary value assigned
to labor, goods and services by others. In place of a market, most
anarcho-communists support a currency-less gift economy where goods
and services are produced by workers and distributed in community
stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is
essentially entitled to consume whatever they want or need as
"payment" for their production of goods and services. A gift
economy does not necessarily involve an immediate return (such as
with remuneration); compensation comes in the form of whatever the
person decides is of equal value to their products of labor (what
is commonly called bartering).
Any limits on production and distribution would be determined by
the individuals within the groups involved, rather than by
capitalist owners, investors, banks or other artificial market
pressures.

Communist anarchism shares many traits with collectivist anarchism but has
defining differences. Collectivist anarchism believes in collective
ownership but communist anarchism negates the entire concept of
ownership in favor of the concept of usage.[27] Thus,
things are seen as either private possessions used by an
individual, or social possessions used to produce for society.
Anarcho-communists believe that means of production should not be
owned by any one person or entity, leaving it free to be used by
individuals for their own self-determined needs and wants. Land and
housing would no longer be subject to rent or property taxes (and
therefore, its use would be free of eviction threats). It would instead be subject
simply to the desires of occupants on an egalitarian basis. For
example, in an apartment building in which many live, no one person
would have a say in the arrangements. All who live there would be
involved in decisionmaking. For example, occupants may decide to
share certain responsibilities on a revolving-door basis rather
than relegate them to a particular individual.

Crucially, the abstract relationship of "landlord" and "tenant"
would no longer exist, for such titles are held to occur under
conditional legal coercion and are not absolutely necessary to
occupy buildings or spaces (intellectual property rights
would also cease). In addition to believing rent and other fees are
exploitative, anarcho-communists feel these are arbitrary pressures
inducing people to carry out unrelated functions. For example, they
question why one should have to work for 'X hours' a day to merely
live somewhere. So instead of working conditionally for the sake of
the wage earned, they believe in working directly for the objective
at hand. From this it follows that, rather than land being for sale
or rent, vacant land and housing would be freely taken regardless
of one's employment or financial status (essentially, the "for
sale" sign could be replaced by a "vacant" sign). Therefore, in
anarcho-communist theory, land used by individuals for themselves
or their families, or productive property used to produce for an
individual (such as a small farm), would be considered private
possessions rather than social possessions. The individual would be
perfectly free to create something and keep it as long as it is not
a crucial means of production for the community or general public.
So an artist's paintbrushes would not need outside approval to be
utilized, and the same basic principle would apply to other
personal items such as one's toothbrush, musical instruments or
book collection, which others needn't tamper with. However, if the
matter at hand involves production for society (such as a factory
which makes toothbrushes, musical instruments or books), it would
become a social possession, accountable to all who work within it
and the consuming public. In that regard, anarcho-communism could
be considered a compromise between collective and individual
use.[28]

Anarcho-communists reject mutualist economics because
they believe that market competition, even non-capitalist markets,
inherently create inequalities in wealth and land which would lead
to inequalities of power - thus the recreation of the State and
capitalism as some workers would have more access to capital and
defence force than others. They reject collectivist economics
arguing that remuneration would require a type of currency, which,
again, anarcho-communists reject as an artificial measurement of
the value of labor. They further argue that those who are not part
of collective groups or unions in workers' councils and collectives could be
alienated from access to capital, and thus promote free common use
over ownership by society.

Philosophical arguments

Anarchist communists reject the claim that wage labor is
necessary because people are by "nature" lazy and selfish. They
point out that even the so-called "idle rich" sometimes find useful
things to do despite having all their needs satisfied by the labour
of others. Anarcho-communists generally do not agree with the
belief in a pre-set 'human nature', arguing that human culture and
behavior is very largely determined by socialization. Many, like Peter
Kropotkin, also believe that human evolutionary tendency is for
humans to cooperate with each other for mutual benefit and survival
instead of existing as lone competitors.[29]

Anarchist communists support communism as a means for ensuring
the greatest freedom and well-being for everyone, rather than only
the wealthy and powerful. In this sense, anarchist communism is a
profoundly egalitarian philosophy. Anarchist
communists do not think that anyone has the right to be anyone
else's master, or 'boss' as this is a concept of capitalism and the
state. Some contemporary anarchist communists and advocates of post-left
anarchy such as Bob
Black reject the concept of work altogether in favor of turning
necessary subsistence tasks into voluntary free play.[30]

Many anarcho-communists (and collectivist anarchists as well)
reject "individualism" and "collectivism" as illusory concepts[31]. They
argue that an individual sacrificing themself for the "greater
good" or being ruled by the "community" or "society" is not
possible because society is composed of individuals rather than
being a cohesive unit separate from the individual, and argue that
collective control over the individual is tyrannical and
un-anarchistic.[32]

Criticisms

Capitalist

Capitalists believe that such a society's productivity and
technological progress would stagnate as individuals would not have
the incentive to work that monetary reward provides.[33]

As a planned economy, albeit a decentralised one, some criticisms of socialism in
general are also applied by some economists to anarchist-communism,
in particular the allegation that such an economy would not be as
efficient in allocating resources as what Adam Smith terms the invisible hand of
the market, leading to waste and societal decline.

Anarchist communists propose that economic distribution should
be based on the maxim "from each according to their ability and to
each according to their needs" believing these "abilities" and
"needs" should be self-determined.

The example of the Spanish revolution, in which high levels of
mobilisation and swift improvements to production were implemented
by anarchists, is often cited as an example of an
anarchist-communist society which saw high levels of motivation and
rapid improvements to both industrial and scientific output. [34]

Marxist-Leninist

Historically, Marxist-Leninists have criticized anarchism as
being incapable of creating a successful and lasting revolution
saying it does not aptly identify issues of class and modes of
production, rather defending "the freedom of the small property
owner" against large scale capitalist enterprise.[35]
However this is more properly attributable to early forms of
anarchism including mutualism and individualist anarchism than
later forms in the communist tradition, such as anarcho-syndicalism.

Marxist-Leninists also believe that without a transitionary
perdiod of state control (their interpretation of the dictatorship of the
proletariat) it would be impossible for any revolution to
maintain the momentum or cohesion to defend and maintain the new
society against external and internal threats. Friedrich
Engels noted: "Without a previous social revolution the
abolition of the state is nonsense; the abolition of capital is in
itself the social revolution and involves a change in the whole
method of production."[36]
Alternatively, such quotations have been interpreted by
Anarcho-Communists supportive of Marx and Engels to suggest the
abolition of capitalism and the state simultaneously, not the
creation of a new state.

Anarchists reject the Leninist model of the "dictatorship of the
proletariat," arguing that any revolutionary minority taking over
state power would be just as authoritarian as the ruling class in
capitalism in order to defend the new state, and would eventually
constitute itself as a new ruling class. Bakunin notes:

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in
absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar
himself.[37]

Many Marxist-Leninists point to what they consider to be failed
anarchist revolutions as evidence that any working class movement
needs a sufficient backbone organizational focus to maintain good
tactics and inspire a proletarian class consciousness, often in the
form of a revolutionary vanguard party.[38]

Anarcho-communists counter-argue that decentralized, stateless
collective federations are sufficient to give both power to workers
and preserve personal freedom and point to the fact that no
socialist state has ever showed signs of "withering away". Again,
the Spanish revolution is cited as an example of successful
anarchist military mobilisation, albeit one crushed by superior
forces.

Anarchist

Founding figure Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
foreshadowed mutualist arguments against anarchist communism when
he said in opposition to the communist maxim "from each according
to ability, to each according to need":

To each according to his works, first; and if, on occasion, I am
impelled to aid you, I will do it with a good grace; but I will not
be constrained".[39]

Mutualists argue that the collectivization of the means of
production implicit in anarchist communism is a removal of liberty,
insisting on the individual's right to the full value of their
labour and supporting instead a system of limited markets and
private property, including mutual labor-owned cooperative firms
and associations and run through banks which loan at cost.

Many individualist anarchists believe that elements of
anarchist-communism are undesirable or even incompatible with
anarchism. Benjamin Tucker referred to it as
"pseudo-anarchism"[40] when
admonishing Peter Kropotkin for opposing wages. Clarence
Lee Swartz says in What is Mutualism: "One of the most
important criteria of freedom is the right to private property in
the products of one's labor. State Socialists, Communists,
Syndicalists and Communist-Anarchists deny private property."

Anarcho-communists counter these criticisms by arguing that the
abolition of property creates maximum freedom for all individuals.
As Errico Malatesta argues,

“

"The individualists
assume ... that the (anarchist) communists wish to impose
communism, which of course would put them right outside the ranks
of anarchism.

"The communists assume ... that the (anarchist) individualists
reject every idea of association, want the struggle between men,
the domination of the strongest – and this would put them not
only outside the anarchist movement but outside humanity.

"In reality those who are communists are such because they see
in common freely accepted the realisation of brotherhood, and the
best guarantee for individual freedom. And individualists, those
who are really anarchists, are anti-communist because they fear
that communism would subject individuals ... to the tyranny of the
collectivity ... Therefore they want each individual, or each
group, to be in a position to enjoy freely the product of their
labour in conditions of equality with other individuals and groups,
with whom they would maintain relations of justice and equity.

"In which case it is clear that there is no basic difference
between us. But, according to the communists, justice and equity
are, under natural conditions impossible of attainment in an
individualistic society, and thus freedom too would not be
attained.

"If climatic conditions throughout the world were the same, if
the land were everywhere equally fertile, if raw materials were
evenly distributed and within reach of all who needed them, if
social development were the same everywhere in the world ... then
one could conceive of everyone ... finding the land, tools and raw
materials needed to work and produce independently, without
exploiting or being exploited. But natural and historical
conditions being what they are, how is it possible to establish
equality and justice between he who by chance finds himself with a
piece of arid land which demand much labour for small returns with
him who has a piece of fertile and well sited land?"[41]

”

Example societies through
history

There have been several attempts, both successful and
unsuccessful, at creating other anarchist-communist societies
throughout much of the world. Anarchist-communists and some green anarchists (especially anarcho-primivists) argue that hunter-gatherertribes, like families, were
early forms of anarchist-communism, due to their egalitarian
nature. Early Christian communities have been described by
Christian anarchists and some historians as having anarcho-communist characteristics.

The Korean Anarchist Movement in Korea led by Kim Jwa Jin briefly
brought anarcho-communism to Korea. The success was short-lived and
much less widespread than the anarchism in Spain or Hungary. Some
consider the current existing anarchist nature of communities in Argentina and the Zapatista
councils in Mexico to be
anarcho-communist. Others consider them to be collectivist or
syndicalist.

Aspects of the Free Software
community, like the Free Software
movement, the GNU
Project and its copyleft principle are a type of a gift
economy for information and software; a gift economy is the
preferred economic system of anarcho-communists.[43]
Programmers make the source code of their programs available for
anyone to copy, modify and improve. Individual programmers gain prestige
and respect, and the community benefits from better software.
Markus Giesler, in his ethnography Consumer Gift Systems,
explored music downloading as a system of social solidarity based
on gift transactions.[44][45] Some
organizations such as online commons (such as the Wikimedia
Commons), wikis and Indymedia are held up as examples of
functioning anarcho-communistic organizations.[43]

^ Marshall Shatz,
Introduction to Kropotkin: The Conquest of Bread and Other
Writings, Cambridge University Press 1995, p. xvi "Anarchist
communism called for the socialization not only of production but
of the distribution of goods: the community would supply the
subsistence requirements of each individual member free of charge,
and the criterion, 'to each according to his labor' would be
superseded by the criterion 'to each according to his needs.'"